Never give up.
I yanked away from the guards, making a dive at one of them and shouldering him hard in the face. He cried out as I jerked free of the other one, slamming my head into his stomach before taking off at a sprint.
I made it three steps before they got me.
I screamed, lashing out with hands and feet as they dragged me up the staircase and onto the plane. I was still screaming and thrashing when they set me down, the two guards and the sheik all around me.
And I was still screaming when I realized the three of them were saying my name.
In voices I recognized.
My eyes flew open, and suddenly, the two guards and the sheik tore off their head covers.
“You bastards!” I almost fell to my knees before Foster, Zane, and Gareth caught me, grinning like crazy men as they held me fiercely.
“What the fuck?!”
“Change of plans,” Zane said with a crazy grin.
“Mitch figured us out,” Foster murmured, holding his bleeding nose from where I’d shouldered him.
“How did you—”
“Escape?” Gareth grinned. “Cause Mitch’s other guards are fucking pussies, that's how. We got the jump on them, and decided on plan B.”
“Plan B?”
“Booking it here to the airfield, grabbing the sheik and his escorts, and taking his place to get you.”
My jaw dropped. “What??”
“What, you think we just have a private fucking jet waiting?” Zane said, chuckling as he leaned in to kiss me.
Foster cleared his throat as he strode to the back of the plane and jerked open the curtain to the galley. A regal looking middle-eastern man and two not so royal looking men were bound and gagged in their underwear, glaring at Foster.
“You guys are unbelievable,” I said, feeling all of the horror and the tension start to melt out of me.
“They’re here,” Gareth grunted, looking out the window.
I jumped to the window to see a jeep roaring towards the airfield from the warehouse. “Who?”
“Foster!” Zane called.
“On it.”
He shut the curtain back on the would-be slave-trading sheik and ran up the length of the plane, jumping into cockpit.
“Wait, is he flying?”
“We are full of surprises, Cass,” Zane laughed, kissing me again. “And I can’t wait for you to figure them all out.”
Outside, the jeep comes to a screeching stop, and two men and…
“Holy shit.”
My jaw dropped at the sight of the red-haired girl and the two men from the auction block the day before.
“Told you we were all getting out of that fucking place,” Gareth muttered with a grin.
The three of them ran up the stairs and breathlessly into the plane, where the guys gruffly shook hand with my outlaws.
“Hi,” the redhead said quietly, smiling at me. “I’m Vivian.”
“Cassandra”
“Desmond,” one of her handsome guys said with a nod.
“Justin,” the other one said before turning to Zane. “Thank you, man. Honestly.”
“My pleasure.”
“Your guys here.” Desmond shook his head. “We owe all of them everything,” he said quietly, pulling Vivian close and leaning in to kiss her head.
“You don’t,” Zane said evenly. “You don’t owe us a thing.”
“Can we save it and get the fuck out of here!” Gareth roared from the window. Outside, five more jeeps full what looked like Mitch’s actual guards were flying towards us.
The plane lurched forward, and suddenly Foster’s voice came in over the loudspeaker.
“The captain has turned on the ‘put your fucking seat-belts on’ sign, so if y’all could go ahead and hold onto your butts, this is about to get fun real fast.”
I shrieked as Gareth grabbed me around the waist, kissing me and hauling me back onto his lap in a seat.
The plane roared down the runway, faster and faster as the trees and the factory building blurred past the window, until suddenly, we were up.
Suddenly, we were away, and leaving the whole horrible nightmare behind us.
“Thanks for flying outlaw air,” Foster chuckled over the intercom. “Now if that gorgeous blonde I saw boarding earlier could come give the pilot a nice long kiss, we’ll be at our destination in no time.
I laughed, letting the rest of the nightmare drop behind me as the plane soared into the sky.
Chapter 19
I sighed as I drained the last of the wine from my glass. I smiled, feeling the last rays of the setting sun teasing over my skin as I lay back on the blanket and let the late summer breeze wash over me.
Peace at last.
We were home, at my mom’s house. All four of us. Well, at that current moment, we were out on the hill near my mom’s house — the one with the view overlooking the river.
I used to come up there all the time. Now I got to bring my guys there.
All of us whole, all of us safe and together.
Mitch’s warehouse hideout had been somewhere in West Virginia of all places. When we’d gotten airborne, we’d flown to the nearest airport, alerting the authorities along the way.
The whole thing happened fast enough that Foster was able to use the plane’s radio to get in touch with people the three of them knew on the ground — people who were able to move on the guys watching their loved ones before Mitch could get in contact with them.
Gareth’s sister, Foster’s grandfather, and Zane’s son Cody were all safely out of retribution’s way before we even landed.
After that, the three outlaws found themselves actually willingly siding with the law to help bring the thunder down on Mitch. Both he and Frank were going to jail, presumably for a very long time.
We also got credit for the sheik, who’d not only been on U.S. soil without a stamp on his passport, but was in violation of about fifty different international laws after they found evidence of intent to purchase and transport women across international borders for the purposes of sexual slavery.
Yeah, that’s a big no-no.
My mother had been beside herself when we’d reunited, hugging me fiercely like she hadn’t seen me in years as we both broke down in tears. She swore never to let me out of her sight again, and to quit drinking as well.
Two weeks later, she was still firm on that. The drinking part, that is.
The letting me out of her sight part? Well, three big, very handsome, and very chivalrous men who’d rescued me palling around put her at a world of ease. We’d had one conversation and one conversation only about the nature of my relationship with my rescuers. And she’d only had one thing to say to me.
“Cassandra, I don’t need details. I do need a happy daughter, and you look happier than I’ve ever seen you.”
And I was.
The no drinking thing did not extend to me, thankfully. So there we were up on the hill sharing a bottle of wine — me the poor little rich girl, and my three outlaw—
“What are we calling each other?”
Zane looked up and grinned. “I’m Zane, if you, ya know, if you missed that before.”
I rolled my eyes as they chuckled. “Ass. I mean what are we?”
Foster eyed me. “You wanna go steady with a couple of outlaws or something?”
I bit my lip looking away.
“What?”
“Nothing”